There is this unheard echolalia of people suffering everyday in a deprived state, buzzing in my eardrums. The flies hover above the unkempt heads of many children, some of whom if provided a steadfast environment and given the proper albeit basic facilities may blossom into flowers whose effervescence will enable our country folk to scale new heights. It did in the case of Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam.
Competition existed from the moment the primordial soup crackled and hissed. The molecules were clubbed together but only the ones that held on long enough got collectively hit by lightning and developed later into coacervates. The coacervates didn’t cease bickering. Some were able to develop rudimentary photoreceptors and became better off than the others. Then came the Amoeba and protozoa after much sieving only those which had optimum metabolism and could survive in harsher environments could persist. The nature has always been a battlefield. Over the course of millions of years nothing has changed in nature. The seeds still fight for minerals and water. The cubs fight over their mother’s teats. But there is one major difference; Man.
Once humanity came into the picture everything changed. Though initially people were utilitarian like the Spartans but eventually as civilization started to prosper; sympathy and zeal to help out the needy crept in stealthily somewhere and no more challenged babies were discarded into the rivers anymore. The picture is no different from ours. Our country was revered in the ancient and medieval period to have exotic resources and commodities at perusal but there was little to none development through the ages in terms of trickling down the economy’s surplus to the needy. Now Liberalised we stand at a juncture where the Monarchs of the days gone by, would have hung themselves unable to cope with the fact that the once overflowing and bountiful nation is now burdened by a Herculean debt from World Bank.
Even though we all ask ‘Why?’; we all do know the reason behind it. We were so far drawn into our shells Pre- Independence and the decades past it; that we failed to comprehend the essence of the task at hand and initially undermined it. Then when it floated up, we examined it . During the examination, we pined over it. After the Examination we dug out the roots of the problem and thought that we had totally determined it. Elaborate plans were formulated and the Apex duly signed it.
We all have a general idea as to how that turned out. A few families struck enough gold for 20 generations while the poor turned poorer. The upper echelons took scented baths but the poor were still going to the railway track to attend nature’s call. The journey from that stage to public toilets has been long but nevertheless the bureaucracy rediscovered the age-old trick of hanging a carrot over the mule’s head to make it move forward. So while the nation was busy seeing the world through their pin-holes……..someone picked their pockets. As the pockets grew in size so did the length of the pick-pocket’s knife.